Study The Concept Of Confucius And Mencius, "benevolence"

Confucian thought that dated back to Confucius and Mencius is the mainstream of Chinese traditional culture. Revealing the original meaning of Confucian and Mencius thought is of great significance as to critically inherit the excellent part of traditional culture in modern cultural construction. "Ren" is the core concept of the thought of Confucius and Mencius. So the profound understanding of Ren is the key when comes to recognize Confucius and Mencius Thought preciously. In this article, the writer takes "Ren" as a concept, or even a concept system from the perspective of history of ideas, and referring to certain methods and results of philology, archeology, sociology of knowledge and so forths the writer tries to make a comparation of the analysis of document ideas and archae logical excavation, combining the overall interpretation and vertical comparative analysis, unifying the logical development of ideology and the mutual drive of it and social basis, and throughing all of these, to examine the generation process of "Ren" and its general features, to reveal the original meaning of Confucius and Mencius thoughts about "Ren", hence to demonstrate the underlying causes of this concept system, its limitation and its reference for modern cultural construction.The first part of this article discusses the generation background of Confucius'"Ren". The forming process of "Ren" was based on the gradual disintegration of the feudal political system, established since Western Zhou Dynasty, and the increasing collapse of the ritual order when this inevitable disintegration of the political structure, advanced gradually, when social order was continuously undermined, whole society went from order to disorder. Under such circumstances, people of Chunqiu Period made a rational reflection of the human history and reality and strived to restrict the external order. To solve this problem, they dated back to the-beginning-to-have-intrinsic-meaning "De" and the-presenting-the-external-order "Li". In Western Zhou Dynasty, "De" consists into the ritual system, with "Li" as a whole. In Chunqiu Period, especially in the mid and late period of it, some philosophers made "De" separate from "Li" gradually with their rational reflections. The former began to possess a sense of intrinsic value, while the latter inherited tradition began to shake off the idea of maintaining the authority of the king of Zhou, and demonstrated a strong sense of instrumental rationality color and political functional meaning. In this context, Confucius excavated and created the concept of "Ren" from many virtues and tried to reconstruct the external order via individual internal order adjustment.The second part discusses the features of Confucius'"Ren". The first figure of it is that it's the fusion between emotion and rationality. "Ren zhe ai ren" is the basic content of "Ren". Confucius looked for the psychological foundation for the proposition that is with the external standard meaning and practicing character from the three-year mourning and blood kinship. In this thinking line, Confucius consciousness of the same concept and reflection on the value of life were highlighted. With such kind of rational self-consciousness, natural blood sublimation got expended and promoted, becoming the stable moral emotions and moral reasons; the original rule and the external political ethics that is closely associated with maintaining rule turned into the internal self-discipline ethics, which is far away from politics but possesses a relatively sense of independence. And human turns into moral people from a natural person; noble personalities become the goal; to achieve the moral self become the ultimate meaning of one's life. The second feature of Confucius'"Ren" is "the name of all virtues". We can recognize it from the following three aspects:first, from the on-behalf-of -personality "Ren", including all the public virtues, and with the specific relationship to the virtues; second, from that it acts as a kind of basic principle and spirit which involves in the virtues, thus made the virtues has a moral value and character. "Ren" as "the name of all virtues" for the main case, is the completion of personality, moral ideals, and the highest level of oneself. The rational basis which exists in every main body is a potential that everyone has the righteous cause of free will and practical ability for being "Ren". Based on such understanding, Confucius set a three increasing scholars, gentlemen, sages, and thought that the completion of one's personality was just a continued process of a series of exploring their own moral life and continuously improving of it by way of a series of learning, reflecting and fulfilling. Then, "Ren" that is of a complete moral attribute is fixed to be human nature, so that each one is a moral subject, and generally improved the overall value of human existence. This is the third feature of "Ren". The forth feature is the extended part of "Ren" to politic, In reality, politics is given a strong moral color, that is Confucius hoped that the ruling class can enable the ordinary people to live a wealthy and moral life via educating, and then make sure that the society can sustain in a harmonious and orderly state under this moral consciousness. This kind of idea of moral politics shows the trend that politics and morality become a unification. It makes the main sense of existence of politics lie in the aspect that it should teach the ordinary people moral ethics in order to enable them to live a moral life under the premise of concerning and protecting the public's interest. This concept has been significantly different from those political ethics that had been formed since Western Zhou Dynasty which was mixed politics with ethics and with it to maintain the unity and the political patriarchal feudal order society. In reflects a new thought of people, which will be more obvious in Mencius.The third part discusses the background that Mencius'"Ren" concept formed. Mencius lived in Warring States Period in which social order was much more turbulent. In order to strengthen self and merger the others, each major vassal state developed different revolutions to different degree at the period. Such revolutions deliberately and directly impact the patriarchal ethics and political order which had already revealed signs of collapse since Chunqiu Period and separate patriarchal from politics. Within the political structure, the color of blood tie faded, and the patriarchal feudal system collapsed. Meanwhile, the vassal states after the change made the period more chaotic and tragic; the public are on the edge of desperation; the highlighted instrumental rationality waved the whole society to the pursuit of profit; however, value rationality was hidden unseen. This caused the whole society went and remained in the ultimate situation. The deterioration of the external order caused the continuous changes in ideological circles, thus creating a situation of Contending. The debate about the ultimate basis for morality between "Mo and Dao", the transformation of the concept of "Ren" by "Mo" and the highlight of "Yi" created a great challenge to Confucius'"Ren". Between Confucius and Mencius, the Confucius looked for the ultimate basis for the center concept------"Ren" from both the inside and outside, and in result of two kinds of "Ren nei Yi wai". This, on one hand, made the Confucian moral philosophy more intrinsic and surpassed the fomer; on the other hand, it also caused the defect that the moral basis was divided into two parts:the inner side and the outer side. At the same time, Da Xue and Zhong Yong, especially a Xue's discussion of the close ties of politics and morality, caused the trend that the Confucius'"Ren" extended towards politics further, thereby becoming the transitional bridge that the benevolent rule of Confucius to the benevolent government of Mencius, the extension of Confucius'"Ren" to politics towards the cover of Mencius'"Ren" to politics.The forth part discusses the characteristics of Mencius'"Ren". The first one is the establishment of "Xing Shan Lun", which decides human nature by the human moral property, and thinks that this kind of property is born with, which reveals the difference between human beings and animal. The core of Xing Shan Lun is the "four-terminal", which consists of the moral emotion and moral reason. "Compassion" breaks the limits of ties of blood and love, as the starting point of "Ren", namely compassion or sympathies, points to the whole rest of human apart from the main case, while it is traced back to human nature, owning the characteristics of authentic prior, and thereby found the inner universal basis for the moral main case------"Ren". In addition, "four-terminal" unified human morality and external moral nature that represented the ultimate benevolence with the progress that the former Confucius made to look for the ultimate basis for "Ren" of Confucius from both the inner side and the outer side, Mencius integrate the "Nature" and the "natural lous", so that the "Ren" of Confucius achieved a relatively thorough intrinsic meaning and transcendence quality. "Ren" raised simultaneously with "Yi" and both of them are used as the name of morality. This is the second feature of Mencius'"Ren". It lets the outstanding "Yi" from Mo and the former Confucians get rid of the utility source, cut off the direct contact with the external Tian Dao and was combined into the main moral case after being injected into the emotional content. After the "Xing Shan Lun" was established, Mencius managed to make the philosophy which was created by Confucius have a greater characteristic, but also enhance the value of human existence. This is obviously presented in the setting of the ideal personality and the ways of moral self-discipline, he therefore puts those internal morality as the core of the ideal personality, and directly stipulated the ideal personality as "sage". Thus, different from those norm of rites that Confucius laid stress on, Mencius' moral cultivation mainly stresses individual rational consciousness, the cultivation of self and the expansion of the good side, so the way of moral cultivation that he said is, in fact, a process of being a internal sage. Such is the third feature of Mencius'"Ren". Mencius'"Ren" get the internal basis of being good, but also demonstrated a strong characteristic of extensive infiltration of politics. Mencius, inherited Confucius'thought so and ideas of ruling with virtues, and elucidated the idea of public livelihood that consisted in the thought of benevolent rule clearly and completely. He thinks that the public is the main part of politics and the aim of politics, and pointed out that the rulers should respect the public opinions. This is a great step forward for the ideas of public. It's a reflection of Mencius'philosophy, based on Xing Shan Lun, in the aspect of politics, or to say the politics that Mencius thought was based on morality, or the politics is namely morality. Because in every aspect of his thoughts, such as a nation's internal affairs, foreign affairs, war and so on, is mixed with the content of morality. And personal safety, a nation's survival and the gain or lost of the land domination are all depended on morality. Thus, Mencius inherited Confucius'political ideology and spreaded it to all levels of politics, and thereby became the main core principle of dealing with relationships and problems in political life. Mencius'thought that made morality equivalent of politics has its positive side, but also there are significant limitations, which are performed significantly in its repeated and elaborated benevolent government acts.To sum up, Confucius raised the internal value of people and made the overall external code of ethics turned into the inner individual self-discipline, and manage to keep relatively independent from politics and maintain a considerable distance from it. Then Mencius made morality more intrinsic and under such circumstances unified it with politics and unified it with politics thought the invitation of Xing Shan Lun and the benevolent theory. This has a profound and long-lasting effect on the next Chinese history.